Achieving adoption and effective usage of Web 2.0 among employees within Australian government organizations
| Date | 14 March 2016 |
| Pages | 41-63 |
| Published date | 14 March 2016 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JSIT-04-2015-0031 |
| Author | Mohd Heikal Husin,Nina Evans,Gaye Deegan |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information systems |
Achieving adoption and effective
usage of Web 2.0 among
employees within Australian
government organizations
Mohd Heikal Husin
School of Computer Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia,
Pulau Pinang, Malaysia, and
Nina Evans and Gaye Deegan
School of Information Technology and Mathematical Sciences,
University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia
Abstract
Purpose – Ensuring effective usage of Web 2.0 within government organisations is not as
straightforward as it seems. The organisations should be aware of a number of issues when
implementing Web 2.0 internally. This paper introduces a theoretical model that highlights the
importance of management, technology and people issues inuencing the level of Web 2.0 usage from
an internal perspective. The purpose of this paper was to identify and explore these issues in a
government context.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses a mixed-method (qualitative and quantitative)
analysis to identify the issues that should be focused on for achieving effective usage of Web 2.0 among
government employees. A combination of interviews, surveys and usage data collected from two
government organisations was used to gather the data.
Findings – The main nding is that, a policy will act as an initial catalyst for culture change and
effective usage of Web 2.0 technologies in a government environment. It was also found that it is
important to develop an understanding among senior management about the motivation for their
employees to utilise Web 2.0 internally. As a result, the proposed theoretical model could assist
government organisations in developing effective adoption approaches through identifying their
employees’ motivation to adopt Web 2.0 technologies and developing a suitable organisational social
media policy.
Research limitations/implications – There is the issue of the small number of both qualitative and
quantitative respondents within the research. Such limitation is because the research relies solely on the
voluntary participation of the employees. This limitation was coupled with the fact that both
organisations had different security requirements that had affected the amount and level of feasible
information that was accessible to the researchers.
Practical implications – This paper extends the understanding of issues applicable to the adoption
of Web 2.0 tools from a government organisations’ perspective. The developed theoretical model acts as
an adoption guide for organisations to achieve effective Web2.0 tools usage. At the same time, this paper
also examines related motivation aspects which higher management should consider while using a new
social media or Web 2.0 platform internally.
Originality/value – This paper highlights suitable overview approaches for organisations to
consider in increasing adoption of Web 2.0 among their employees. This paper also provides an initial
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Adoption and
effective
usage of Web
2.0
41
Received 9 April 2015
Accepted 19 November 2015
Journalof Systems and
InformationTechnology
Vol.18 No. 1, 2016
pp.41-63
©Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1328-7265
DOI 10.1108/JSIT-04-2015-0031
foray into identifying other complex issues that may exist within different government organisations in
relation to internal technology usage.
Keywords Government 2.0, Internal usage, Employee motivation, Policy development,
Risk mitigation
Paper type Conceptual paper
1. Introduction
The use of Web 2.0 technologies such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter has been
growing exponentially over the past few years because of the public’s fascination
with the complex connectedness of modern society (Musser and O’Reilly, 2006). This
fascination has improved many facets of communication, and the improvements
have not gone unnoticed by private organisations that have begun integrating the
technology into their business activities with signicant benets. The integration of
technology has also become common practice within government organisations, as
Web 2.0 technologies are used within their work activities (Tapscott et al., 2007).
When Web 2.0 tools were rst introduced into government, use of the tools was not
publicly highlighted (Hau-Dong et al., 2010;Osimo, 2008). Such low awareness of Web
2.0 usage within government organisations could be because lower-level managers
without ofcial approval started such initiatives (Mergel, 2011;Osimo, 2008). The siloed
culture and low level of transparency also led to the low awareness of, and internal usage
of, Web 2.0 technologies (Dadashzadeh, 2010;McClure, 2010). Decisions within
government organisations are also commonly made through a highly linear process,
which results in longer turnaround times and larger amounts of paperwork (Bertot et al.,
2010;McClure, 2005). The situation is made more complex, as departments usually have
different processes, which could suppress possible collaborative opportunities (Mergel,
2011;Picazo-Vela et al., 2012).
As Web 2.0 usage among government organisations grows, more researchers are
examining the technology’s suitability in relation to external usage by the public
(Carter and Bélanger, 2005;Hung et al., 2006;Mergel et al., 2009). With much of the
focus on external usage, research on the internal use of Web 2.0 has received little
attention. With the aim of addressing this gap, this paper presents an investigation
into related issues that inuence effective adoption of Web 2.0. This internal usage
focus was also motivated by the need to develop a better understanding of these
tools and, at the same time, lower the risks associated with using Web 2.0 internally
within the context of government organisations. This paper’s contribution is the
identication of issues that limit effective approaches for using Web 2.0 tools within
government organisations. Issues related to management, technical and people can
be mitigated through an effective policy and an understanding of employees’
motivation for use.
The next section of the paper rst describes the research background followed by the
related research methods and research results. Second, a description of the resulting
model is given, followed by a discussion about the usefulness and possible future
enhancements of the model. Finally, the conclusion highlights the contributions of the
paper and areas for further research are suggested. In this paper, the terms “social media
tools/Web 2.0 tools” are both used to represent tools with specic or non-specic Web
2.0 capabilities.
JSIT
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